I had to abandon Hotmail due to insane amounts of span which persisted through account name changes. Gmail does a great job of filtering my spam, and even then I receive maybe one a week, which is way less than the amount of spam I get from my real life friends via Facebook. I've had a burner account, also with Gmail, for several years that I use without thinking twice, and I still don't get any spam beyond what I've signed up for. And anyway, I get a kick out of checking my spam folder because there are always ads for spam recipes. Unwanted emails sometimes make their way into my inbox, usually a newsletter that won't let me unsubscribe, but a few swift clicks and the spam filter takes care of that. I pretty much just don't ever post my email address online or sign up for adult websites and that seems to do the trick.

fusillade762:I don't get spam anymore because I don't use my primary email addy for anything online. I thought everyone had a secondary account for petitions and such.

It's a balancing act. If you shelter your "primary" address too much it's useless. I tried that approach and eventually the spam did come shortly after registering with a reputable site, albeit not as heavily as my condom address.

Then there's the likelihood that your address will end up with spammers because friends or family members get infected with spyware. Or because spammers just try every pre-@ username combination.

Basically you should take precautions, but it's virtually impossible to be spam-free.

Pretty close. I just checked out our spam filter and about 60% of all messages received since it was installed were blocked as spam (more were blocked if you count viruses and rate-controlled messages).

That said, our users are atrocious at marking things as spam. I doubt we're beating the average, I think our people just aren't very good at managing their email.

toetag:I had to report to the CIO yesterday on said subject. 80% of all mail coming in was spam in the last 60 days. As tkohl said, it can be hire depending on the month.

Ours is 75% for the week so far and 78% for the month, well above average.

Between server side filters for (Google now helps run Virginia Tech's email) for spam and client sized, I don't see maybe one spam a month, if that. And that's generally only if I look in my client side spam filter.

I am Mr. John Goodman, there is a customer of our financial institution with some good financial asset.

It involves the transfer of sum $20M. I shall perfect all legal documents in your name to make you the legal beneficiary to the funds, Once the funds are transferred to your nominated account then we will share the proceeds in a ratio of 55% for me, 40% for you and 5% for the less privileged. Please it is a secret deal.

Kindly respond with the following information below for further details if you are interested in this business, also contact me via my private e-mail: johngo­odma­n77­7li­am­gc­o­m

wademh:On my work email, they manage to filter out 50% of my legitimate email and somehow think that improves efficiency.

Tell them to get a different product. We used a product that I spent around 6 ours a week creating filters. Then we switched to a new product, I spend 0 hours a week on it and I can't think when the last time a user called and complained about legitimate email being trapped.

toetag:Tell them to get a different product. We used a product that I spent around 6 ours a week creating filters. Then we switched to a new product, I spend 0 hours a week on it and I can't think when the last time a user called and complained about legitimate email being trapped.

What are you using? We're using a Barracuda 800 at our main site and a 200 at each branch office and they work unbelievably well. Basically just plugged them in, set the networking and a few preferences up and changed a couple routing groups in our Exchange array and we were done, it's hummed along ever since without a problem. Plus it has the little outlook plugin you can push across the network to clients so they can manage almost everything themselves right within Outlook however is best for them.

We still get complaints about legit emails getting caught but now it's just a matter of educating them on whitelisting and managing their own spam/not spam every now and then instead of tweaking rules.

I have 5 in my spam folder right now, but I don't remember last time I emptied it... according to the oldest one... before the 17th...

Overall, if I get more than 20 in a month, I'd be surprised... and I've had this email for about 15 years and use it on just about everything.

But some people I know get over a hundred a day, but they keep registering to porn and just about any stupid sites...

Once you get on a list, it usually goes up fast.... there's been a few times that I'd get more thanks to registering at some site (can't remember which but it was probably a gadget store somewhere in Asia) but it didn't last and they dwindled eventually.

Vegan Meat Popsicle:wademh: On my work email, they manage to filter out 50% of my legitimate email and somehow think that improves efficiency.

Do you not have the ability to mark things as spam/not spam or whitelist certain senders or domains?

Not as a user. They don't send things through at all. They also maintain a 5 mb limit on attachment size which really sucks when you have to send around presentations for comment/editing. I miss having quality IT support.

I am Mr. John Goodman, there is a customer of our financial institution with some good financial asset.

It involves the transfer of sum $20M. I shall perfect all legal documents in your name to make you the legal beneficiary to the funds, Once the funds are transferred to your nominated account then we will share the proceeds in a ratio of 55% for me, 40% for you and 5% for the less privileged. Please it is a secret deal.

Kindly respond with the following information below for further details if you are interested in this business, also contact me via my private e-mail: jo­hng­oodman­7­77l­ia­mgc­o­m

ChubbyTiger:Gmail is best mail. I get maybe one spam message a week. Maybe. Lots of useless crap from the crazy uncle, but I can't just send everything of his to the spam folder.

But you can create a filter that takes everything from him, bypasses the inbox and marks it as read. If you don't want to miss any actual emails from him, add a filter parameter for "FW" in the subject line, too.

wademh:Vegan Meat Popsicle: wademh: On my work email, they manage to filter out 50% of my legitimate email and somehow think that improves efficiency.

Do you not have the ability to mark things as spam/not spam or whitelist certain senders or domains?

Not as a user. They don't send things through at all. They also maintain a 5 mb limit on attachment size which really sucks when you have to send around presentations for comment/editing. I miss having quality IT support.

Speaking as a "quality" IT person, PLEASE STOP USING EMAIL AS A FILESHARE! That 10MB spreadsheet they sent you that you changed font on and forwarded back is now taking up 20MB. Learn how to use a shared network location, at least, and better yet, a version-control management system. I know "drive-space is cheap", but if you add bandwidth and messaging-backup and archiving infrastructure, it adds up to a really expensive, very inefficient file-store. TMYK

As someone working on a spam analysis project at the office, I can concur that it seems the overall volume has dropped. Not much, but it goes in waves. Hard to gauge the volume of a flood when peeping through a pinhole.

I really want your spam, especially the messages with links/URLs that lead to somewhere other than what the messages claim. If you're feeling especially civic-minded, you can redirect or forward the message with full headers to farksp­am­tibbar­hs­imacom (I'm completely serious).

Just last month I stumbled upon a spam-relaying malware that seemed intent on sending those pill-vendor messages. The malware had far greater success making the SMTP connection to Microsoft (Hotmail) servers than to Google, but it still tried Google over and over again anyway. A little authentication, apparently, goes a long way.

Tada! Opt Out PrescreenThat eliminated most of the crap I got (no more Capital One offers, etc). Any remaining stuff, mostly magazines, you can usually call them, give them the reference number on the mailer, and they'll remove you from their list - only takes a couple minutes.

Now I only get crap from the local State Farm agent. Stupid Franny Haranin.

Vegan Meat Popsicle:What are you using? We're using a Barracuda 800 at our main site and a 200 at each branch office and they work unbelievably well. Basically just plugged them in, set the networking and a few preferences up and changed a couple routing groups in our Exchange array and we were done, it's hummed along ever since without a problem. Plus it has the little outlook plugin you can push across the network to clients so they can manage almost everything themselves right within Outlook however is best for them.

We still get complaints about legit emails getting caught but now it's just a matter of educating them on whitelisting and managing their own spam/not spam every now and then instead of tweaking rules.

Work uses Barracuda. To date, it's caught zero spam for me and 5-10 real emails a week. And it occasionally likes to wait a day or two to tell me I have something in my quarantine.

Gmails spam filters are so good I actually get more spam on my physical mailbox than i do in my in box. It's gotten to the point where I check my mail once a week since the majority of the time it's just adverts and insurance company spam

RobotSpider:wademh: Vegan Meat Popsicle: wademh: On my work email, they manage to filter out 50% of my legitimate email and somehow think that improves efficiency.

Do you not have the ability to mark things as spam/not spam or whitelist certain senders or domains?

Not as a user. They don't send things through at all. They also maintain a 5 mb limit on attachment size which really sucks when you have to send around presentations for comment/editing. I miss having quality IT support.

Speaking as a "quality" IT person, PLEASE STOP USING EMAIL AS A FILESHARE! That 10MB spreadsheet they sent you that you changed font on and forwarded back is now taking up 20MB. Learn how to use a shared network location, at least, and better yet, a version-control management system. I know "drive-space is cheap", but if you add bandwidth and messaging-backup and archiving infrastructure, it adds up to a really expensive, very inefficient file-store. TMYK

haha... pretty true probably...

As a consultant for one of the big four groups, I had the pleasure of meeting a guy with an MBA once who's entire six figure job was to forward emails based on the subject line to the appropriate department.

When I mentioned that was a feature of MS Outlook, he gave me the "are you a wizard" look back.

Honestly, I don't know what the hell the rest of you people outside of IT do because every time I'm dragged into a meeting with the "business" side of the house, it feels like I'm in the twilight zone.

Swoop1809:Gmails spam filters are so good I actually get more spam on my physical mailbox than i do in my in box. It's gotten to the point where I check my mail once a week since the majority of the time it's just adverts and insurance company spam

Imagine if Google offered 'snail mail' spam filtering services. That would be awe-some.

Satanic_Hamster:Between server side filters for (Google now helps run Virginia Tech's email) for spam and client sized, I don't see maybe one spam a month, if that. And that's generally only if I look in my client side spam filter.